Monday Minute, April 6, 2009

Posted By Michael Fraase
Apr 7, 2009 at 8:38 AM

Dear Colleagues,

Good things do happen, even amidst today's gloomy economic news. I heard at the end of last week that the provost's office has granted 20 College of Design faculty an annual award as part of the University's Imagine Fund for the arts, humanities, and design. The $1.3 million Imagine Fund, available to tenure-track and tenured faculty at the University, arose out of the recognition that the arts, humanities, and design have many fewer sources of funding than the sciences to support our research. Faculty from all three of our academic departments will each receive $3,000 to do everything from starting new areas of investigation to covering significant research-related travel to preparing completed material for publication. We have listed the award recipients on our CDes MEMO blog.

The University has also established a smaller pool of money to support the work of still-active retired faculty. Roger Martin, emeritus professor in Landscape Architecture, has received support to complete a research project he has been working on. And, I just got back from a meeting in which the deans from three colleges selected three faculty members in DHA to receive funding as part of a legacy Human Ecology Research Fund.

Congratulations to all who have received these awards! In a period of constrained resources, our pursuit of outside support becomes ever more important. I want to encourage everyone in the college to think about how your work might attract external funding. It not only helps bring in additional revenue, but it also presents an excellent opportunity to compete with colleagues across the University. This recent spate of awards shows just how competitive we are.